Business Strategy – Mid-West Digital Marketinghttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com
Thu, 26 Jul 2018 14:20:21 +0000en-UShourly175379469Conversion: Lead Generation to Purchasing Customerhttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/#respondWed, 01 Jul 2015 13:29:24 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3157As a Business owner, you know business strategies don’t always work well if they come in the “one size fits all” variety, especially when it comes to lead generation and conversion. How would you have a competitive advantage? When it comes to digital marketing there are a lot of options and opportunities for creating a... Read more »

]]>As a Business owner, you know business strategies don’t always work well if they come in the “one size fits all” variety, especially when it comes to lead generation and conversion. How would you have a competitive advantage? When it comes to digital marketing there are a lot of options and opportunities for creating a strong business practice online.

Lead Generation:

This would be something that tells new people about who you are or it could tell existing clients about a new product/service that they don’t currently utilize. Your “lead generator” could search engine marketing such as Google AdWords, Bing or Yahoo network advertising, banner ads, contextual ads, video ads or Facebook ads.

You could be getting lead generation from your sales staff, an onsite data collection, referral sources and Broadcast Radio. While determining your best generation option, there are questions you can ask to be sure it will be successful: Is your lead generator targeted? Will it have a high return based on the strategy and specific product/service you’re promoting? Will you get quality leads based on your strategy?

Lead Collection:

When you are generating leads, where does the potential client/customer go on your website and what are you asking them to do? Are they going to fill out a form? Online forms make it easy for you, but does it make it easy for your potential client? Better yet, if you make it easy for your potential client, are you still gathering the best information to convert that lead into a sale? The “call-to-action” on your site might be great, but if the collector is too complicated the user experience could be ruined and the conversion won’t happen.

Lead Conversion:

Let’s convert those leads to sales dollars! I don’t mean to confuse you here. A lot of times we talk about conversion online as completing a goal. For example we might consider someone filling out your online form to be a conversion. I want to take that a step further and think about it in terms of sales. If you have truly converted a lead outside of digital marketing, they have decided on you and bought your product or service. If you have an e-commerce site and individuals can buy your product/service online, the components discussed above apply to you differently. But for someone still looking to utilize their standard business model and sell offline, this is something to really think about. Whoever follows up with your online leads is vital! If you are doing a good job of sending qualified leads to your lead collector, this next phase of lead conversion could mean big dollars. Have you thought about creating a standard process for follow up? Even a little discussion and training for the individuals who will be following up with you leads could do wonders!

What are your ideas on digital conversions? Do you have a call-to-action idea you need help fleshing out?

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/07/lead-generation-conversion/feed/03157Reporting and Understanding Datahttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/#respondWed, 08 Apr 2015 13:44:41 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=3058Every Easter, my parents host an egg hunt. My little cousins can barely wait to finish dinner; they get so excited for it. My dad hides the plastic eggs early in the morning and counts them as he puts them out. 96 this year. When they are collected, the kids empty the treasures and recount... Read more »

]]>Every Easter, my parents host an egg hunt. My little cousins can barely wait to finish dinner; they get so excited for it. My dad hides the plastic eggs early in the morning and counts them as he puts them out. 96 this year. When they are collected, the kids empty the treasures and recount the eggs to see how many are left on the acreage. They are rarely all found. This year, the cousins found 90 eggs. My dad then takes a few chosen kids out to the yard and points out the missing findings. As the expert who understands the terrain best, he finds the missing eggs with no problem.

Do you find yourself hunting?

Understanding data from your online marketing efforts should not be like an Easter egg hunt. You might not understand key performance indicators or terms like CTR, reach, impressions, html, H2s or bounce rate and we don’t expect you to. We can walk you through a relevant report you got from a previous vendor or explain something we reported to you with a few more down to earth terms. It’s exciting to have so much data from online marketing efforts, but it’s even more exciting when you can understand the valuable information from the report. It’s our job to point that information out to you and explain what it means.

What do we report on?

Monthly and quarterly, we report on a variety of data based on the goals we have created with you. We pick out key points and highlight those along with our reports so you don’t have to do the searching through the data. It’s our intention to translate our reporting into meaningful marketing minded statements that simply summarize our findings or easily articulate a needed action.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2015/04/reporting-digital-data/feed/03058Looking Forward . . . Business Strategy (Digital Platforms)https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-digital-platforms/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-digital-platforms/#respondWed, 31 Dec 2014 15:49:36 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=2917Committing to change is a tough challenge, but once you start it gets easier when you see the benefits. We have been talking about your website, now let’s talk about how people find your website, just because you built a website and you put it out there on some server, people are not going to... Read more »

]]>Committing to change is a tough challenge, but once you start it gets easier when you see the benefits. We have been talking about your website, now let’s talk about how people find your website, just because you built a website and you put it out there on some server, people are not going to flock to it.

People have more options available than ever before to them to search for stuff they may or may not need.

Some of the more popular options include:

Google,

Bing,

Yahoo,

You Tube,

AOL, Ask.com and whole bunch of other search engines.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and of lot of other social sites.

Shopzilla, eBay, Amazon, PriceGrabber and lots of other shopping sites.

Now, here come the questions:

Are you using any of these platforms to market your company? If the answer is “YES”, please continue, if the answer is “NO”, then we should talk soon.

What platforms are you using and which of their services are using? Why did you pick the platforms you are using?

Who is managing these platforms? (If the answer is YOU, we should talk and SOON)

How do you know what you are doing is working?

Points to consider when choosing which digital marketing platforms you should be using to help you drive traffic to your website and grow your business.

What reports are you looking at on a regular basis? And even more important, what are you doing based on those reports?

Mid-West Digital Marketing is a full-service digital agency and a Google Partner who can work with you to develop an effective marketing strategy to help you get found on the web, improve the quality of traffic to your website and increase your bottom line. All important things in this digital age.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-digital-platforms/feed/02917Looking Forward…Business Strategy (Your Website)https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-your-website/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-your-website/#respondTue, 30 Dec 2014 15:42:46 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=2913Resolutions are not just for New Year’s Day, but something we should be thinking about all year round. Especially if we are talking about a business strategy. Let’s take a couple of minutes to talk about your website. When was the last time you looked at your website like a potential customer seeing your website... Read more »

]]>Resolutions are not just for New Year’s Day, but something we should be thinking about all year round. Especially if we are talking about a business strategy.

Let’s take a couple of minutes to talk about your website.

When was the last time you looked at your website like a potential customer seeing your website for the very first time ever? Okay, let’s try another question, when was the last time you updated the content on your website?

Go to your computer and open your favorite browser, type in the URL of your business’ website, wait for it to open, now look at it . . . .

Here are a few questions you should answer:

Without scrolling or changing the size of the window, are you able to see any of the following:

The NAME of your business?

A clear, concise statement of what you are about?

A list of your social media platforms (or the little icons that will connect visitors to your social media pages)? Not doing social media? We should talk later.

Are the colors reflective of your brand?

Do you have a nice clean logo?

Scroll to the bottom of the page, are you able to see any of the following:

Copyright date of your website? Is it the current year?

A link to your website’s privacy policy? Do not have a privacy policy? Or know what a website privacy policy should be? We should talk. Later.

Is the content on your site laid out in a logical manner that is easy to follow? Can visitors to your site easily navigate around your website to find the information they need?

In addition to good content that is easy to read and understand, is your website visually appealing with nice graphics, good colors and high quality images?

Think about this, think about your business, think about what you need to do, then, we should talk.

Before you go, I am going throw in a plug, a shameless one at that. We offer businesses a review of your website and how your current marketing efforts are doing in driving traffic to the website. It is a called a Strategy Developer and when you call to talk to an Account Executive let them know you read this blog and are interested in a Strategy Developer for your company’s website and how we can help grow your business.

Next time, we will be talking about what digital marketing platforms you are using.

]]>https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy-your-website/feed/02913Looking Forward . . . Business Strategyhttps://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy/
https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/2014/12/looking-forward-business-strategy/#respondMon, 29 Dec 2014 15:36:18 +0000https://midwestdigitalmarketing.com/?p=2910This is the time of year most people are thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and what they want to change for the coming year. This is also the time of year business owners might want to be looking at their business plans for the coming year and decide where changes need to be made. Let’s... Read more »

]]>This is the time of year most people are thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and what they want to change for the coming year. This is also the time of year business owners might want to be looking at their business plans for the coming year and decide where changes need to be made.

Let’s start with a few basic questions:

How much do you want to grow your business in 2015?

Do you have a website for your business?

How do you plan on tracking and measuring your growth to your goal?

Let’s continue with a few basic answers and some more questions:

If the answer is greater than 1% growth in 2015 over 2014, continue reading because we might have some information that will be useful for you.

If the answer is yes, that is a good thing. But, when was the last time the content on your website was updated? If the answer is somewhere between a year and “I cannot remember”, we should talk.

If you have a website, do you have Google Analytics installed on your website? If the answer to this question is “NO”, we should talk; if the answer to this question is “YES”, good for you. When was the last time you looked at your Google Analytics account? Do you understand what that information is telling you? If the answers to the last two questions are “between twice and never” and “not really”, we should talk.

Let’s talk about your plan for growth, here are some points that are the foundation of every good marketing plan.

Is your website the focal point of your marketing plan to grow your business? If it is not, it should be. Everything you do to market your business should be directing people to your website.

How are you driving traffic to your website? Every piece of marketing material, and I mean EVERY piece of marketing material MUST include the URL for your website.

Google Analytics, Google Analytics and Google Analytics. You must be able to track the source of every visitor to your website. The easiest tool to implement and use to track the sources of every visitor to your website, is Google Analytics, Google Analytics, and Google Analytics.

Think about this, think about your business, think about what you need to do, then, we should talk.